


Field Medicine

by Agib



Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Derek Morgan, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27117001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agib/pseuds/Agib
Summary: “Morgan! Hotch, Morgan’s down!” He’d screamed. “Derek, Derek - where are you - oh God, okay. I’m gonna move you.”Derek’s pant legs were covered in blood, he bared his teeth and groaned loudly. The two of them were in the open, sitting ducks.“Ah,” he grunted as Spencer moved him backward.There were more shots, many of them. Hotch didn’t respond when Spencer screamed for him again.
Relationships: Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid
Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945771
Comments: 5
Kudos: 105
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Field Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is so short,
> 
> but,
> 
> m' tired :(

“Oh God, oh shit - oh, oh - okay - _okay_ , it’s fine, you’re okay - we’re good.”

“I _can_ hear you, y’know?” Derek grits out, feet slipping over rocks and pebbles as Spencer adjusts his grip beneath his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he says meekly, still scooting backward breathlessly. “Sorry - I just - _God_ , I thought you were…” Spencer trails off, inhaling sharply.

Derek knows what he means.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he jokes. “But I’m still with you, kid.”

“Great,” Spencer huffs, “just what I needed,” he laughs. It’s choked, like he’s still on the verge of crying, or perhaps his voice is still hoarse from the screaming.

\----

_“Get out of there! Go! Reid, Morgan, stand down!”_

_They expected three, a pack dynamic of three unsubs, all armed and dangerous._

_Not nine._

_“SWAT’s on their way. We aren’t equipped, get down.”_

_All nine men had firearms, and they were incredibly willing to use them, considering how fast they had begun shooting at the field agents through the woods._

_“Ah! Shit!”_

_“Morgan! Hotch, Morgan’s down!” He’d screamed. “Derek, Derek - where are you - oh God, okay. I’m gonna move you.”_

_Derek’s pant legs were covered in blood, he bared his teeth and groaned loudly. The two of them were in the open, sitting ducks._

_“Ah,” he grunted as Spencer moved him backward._

_There were more shots, many of them. Hotch didn’t respond when Spencer screamed for him again._

\----

Spencer finds them a shaded spot behind the outcropping of a rock and props Derek gently upright with a careful hand.

“Good?” He asks, panting slightly from the exertion of dragging his teammate halfway across a forest.

“Aside from the bullet in my thigh, just great,” Derek bites. Spencer frowns, his lips pressing together in a downturned version of his frog-like smile.

“We don’t know where the others are, or if they’re, um… we don’t know how long we’ll be here and I need to staunch the bleeding,” the kid says shakily.

“You do what you need, ‘kay?” Derek gets out. He’s lost colour in his cheeks and sweat beads across his forehead as he breathes in and out slowly.

“You sick?” Spencer asks seriously.

“Mm,” Derek hums, his eyes squeezed shut now.

“I can stop the bleeding but if we’re here for too long -”

“I know, do what you need to do,” Derek hisses. He squirms against the rock, his eyes opening and closing intermittently.

“God, okay - okay, um, Derek?”

“Wh’t?” He says through clenched teeth.

“I can’t - I can’t do this.”

Derek opens his eyes, taking Spencer in carefully. 

He’s paled considerably, his cheeks sheet white and eyes blown wide in shock. “I’m not equipped for this - I can’t _hurt_ you.” There’s genuine truth in his words, he looks terrified at the prospect of hurting Derek despite the necessity behind it.

As he speaks, he tugs off his Kevlar and clutches at his sweater vest, gingerly hovering the clean fabric above Derek’s jolting leg.

Derek lifts his knee, bumping the cloth against his wound and swallowing his wince.

Spencer makes a meek noise and readjusts the vest, pressing further down until he’s exerting enough pressure to clog the still streaming wound.

“Okay?” He asks timidly.

“As it can be,” Derek grates. He’s fighting to not only cope with the stinging flare of contact, but the urge to show it on his face, too - for Spencer’s benefit. “I’m okay,” he says flatly.

“You’re not though,” Spencer murmurs bitterly. “You’ve been shot through the thigh and there’s no exit wound,” he points out rather sharply. 

“You digging it out?” Derek asks.

“I mean… if we’re here for more than an hour I’m going to have to,” he mutters. “But there’s risk of infection, and bleeding out, and -”

“Woah, slow down,” Derek says carefully. “We won’t be here long, SWAT is on their way, they’re an hour and a half out from this point in the woods with all their gear.”

“That’s too long. You can’t sit here bleeding for an hour and a half,” Spencer replies nervously. “Nor can you just… have bullet fragments in you if I stitch you up.”

“Stitch me up? With what?”

“I had an emergency first aid kit in my side bag back at the meet location.”

Derek narrows his eyes, watching the way Spencer twitches his fingers against the cloth and pokes his head out from behind the rock like a nervous rabbit. 

“There’s no way in Hell that I’m letting you trek back through the forest to find your side bag,” he says sternly. 

“It’s half a mile away and it has my phone, too.” Spencer argues. 

“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got a bunch of armed men on the loose, you’re not going wanderin’ off on your own, kid.”

“M’ not a kid,” Spencer mumbles. “Besides. You’re not really in a position to stop me.”

He yelps quietly in surprise when Derek reaches across him and clasps a hand over his bony wrist, squeezing tightly. 

“Don’t, please,” Derek begs. “I don’t know what I’d do if you went off to help me and got shot.”

Spencer softens, lightly running his forefinger over Derek’s fist, currently wrapped around his forearm. 

“I won’t. And I need to. I’m sorry,” he says calmly. “I swear I’ll be careful, and I also promise to find help once I have my phone and I’ve gotten back here.”

Derek’s grip loosens and he looks angrily out to the trees, still plagued. 

“Fine.” He cuts. “Fifteen minutes then I’m coming looking for you.”

“Fiftee - Derek, you’ve been shot…” Spencer says incredulously. 

“And if you get shot too then we’re both screwed.”

There are still lone bullets being shot into the air, they sound distant, but they still make Spencer flinch when they sound off. 

“I won’t get shot, that fire is coming from the opposite direction than the meet point. Please, just trust me.” Spencer implores, looking at Derek with wide, usually excitable eyes now stretched with worry and fear.

“Please be safe,” he relents.

“I will,” Spencer promises. “Keep pressure on that and start yelling if anyone gets too close.”

Derek nods, watching as Spencer ducks out from behind the rocks. He listens to the kid’s footsteps growing further away until they’re so distant he can no longer hear the uneven footfall.

The pressure in his leg is getting worse, to the point where the sides of his vision blur out into fuzzy smears when his leg involuntarily twitches from the pain.

He thinks perhaps as long as Spencer comes back with his phone, taking a nap won’t hurt. Worst case - or rather, best case - scenario, Spencer stitches him up while he’s unconscious and he can wake up in a hospital pumped full of pain killers. 

Regardless, nothing seems as urgent as letting his eyes finally slip shut for some peace and quiet.

\----

Derek is almost grey with blood loss by the time Spencer has finally gotten back. He’s on the phone to Penelope and tries his best not to worry her when he crouches by Derek’s side and tries to rouse him.

“Mmhmm,” is all the older agent manages. His eyes are squeezed shut and Spencer starts panicking. 

A small part of himself was really hoping Hotch and the others would have made their way back to the meet point, but unless they had circled all the way back to the SUV’s, where the shooting was still coming from, they were laid low like Spencer and Derek were.

“Swat is thirty minutes out,” Penelope says hurriedly. “How’s my chocolate thunder doing?”

“Uh,” he sighs, “been better, I think.” There must be something in his voice, fear, tension, worry, because it sparks Penelope off too.

“What’s going on, Spence?” She asks seriously.

“I think… I think I need to take the bullet out and maybe stitch the wound,” he admits, voice shaking almost as much as his hands.

“Oh - okay…” Penelope says.

“You should mute me,” he suggests. “If he… If Derek wakes up.” He knows Penelope has always been squeamish, and this type of procedure - on Derek no less - won’t do her any favours.

“I’ll do that,” she whispers, sounding ill already. “You can hear me though,” she promises. “I’ll talk you through it.”

\----

It’s horrible, Derek does wake up after he’s dug out the first fragment. He squeezes Spencer's elbow with a vice grip, no doubt leaving smeared fingerprint bruises as he goes.

It’s the first time Spencer’s ever heard him say the f-word, which is a surprise.

He hates every second of it.

There were three fragments, each one deeper than the last. Derek makes strained, pained noises that tear Spencer’s heart up and he almost calls it. Almost gives up multiple times.

“No. Keep going,” Derek bites out each time. “Just get it over with.”

He passes out after the third stitch, when Spencer starts needing to pull the wound closed.

\----

He stays quiet, curled up against the opposite side of Derek’s torso to his injury for forty-two minutes, according to Penelope, when SWAT finally arrives, taking far too much longer than their initial estimation.

They found Hotch, Prentiss, Rossi and JJ before them, and Rossi was the only other one of them with a bullet wound, a small graze at his shoulder, barely needed two stitches.

Derek had needed eight.

He’s still unconscious for the ride to the hospital where they only unpick three of Spencer’s stitches to redo. They take out the ones his hands had been trembling too hard to hold the needle steady for, the ones where Derek’s breathing had dropped too shallow for Spencer’s liking.

\----

“Hey,” the man says. “So, you’re eating _my_ Jell-O now?”

“Hey - hi, h - how - how do you feel?” He asks nervously, rubbing his fists along the hemline of his slacks.

“Good, no pain,” he says, watching the kid deflate and relax like a popped balloon. “They said if SWAT hadn’t turned up when you did, well… you saved my life.”

“Oh?”

“Too much blood loss, stitching me up probably stopped me from dipping into critical.”

“Derek… you _were_ in critical condition, you lost almost a third of your blood volume,” Spencer points out, looking more than mildly upset.

“Oh,” he deadpans, laughing lightly. Spencer frowns, the lines between his brows crinkling endearingly.

“Lucky I had you then, pretty boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is [@ag-ib](https://ag-ib.tumblr.com/)
> 
> my heart goes <3<3<3 when anyone sends asks


End file.
